2014 New Years Resolutions

2013 was a really wonderful and positive year for me professionally. My practice grew, I made some wonderful professional connections, saw some wonderful little friends for treatment and assessment, grew in my knowledge and really feel that I grew a great deal as a clinician. I also had a few pretty cool experiences. My little practice had it's first birthday, I started this blog, and I began indulging in my enjoyment for developing resources, sharing them through Teachers Pay Teachers.

This year, I want to keep the momentum going. Now that I'm back to work, I've had been thinking a lot about what the goals I have for myself and my practice are this year, and how I can go about achieving them. I would to be proactive this year about working toward professional goals, so that I can make the most of the opportunities I have. My big goals are:

Learn more

This is one is obvious, and comes with the territory of being a Speech Pathologist. There's always new and better information coming through in the research, and always more to learn to make me a more effective clincian. This year, I would like to dedicate more time to professional development, and hopefully attend more conferences. Right now, I am keen to build on my knowledge of early language development and difficulties. It's one of my favourite populations to see, and an area that I'm so, so passionate about.

Build on this blog

I started this blog in October, and haven't done a great deal with it yet. I've not had time to get a good feel for the direction I want take it in, or what I want to write about. This year my goal is to explore blogging more, while sharing my experiences, resources and information I think others might find useful. I also want to use this blog as a platform build on my own clinical knowledge and learning

Get involved in community awareness

This will be a new challenge for me. I've signed up to be a Nation for Communication Champion for Speech Pathology Australia, as part of the International Communication Project. I have plans so far to send out information about the ICP to clients, and encourage them to share their stories, but I'm in the process of brainstorming ideas to spread a wider net of awareness about communication difficulties (suggestions are welcomed!). I'm really excited to see where I can take this one.

As I get deeper into the year, I will hopefully be able to make these very general goals much more specific. It will be interesting to revisit these through the year to see just how much I feel I've accomplished in each.

Love It and List It: Language Apps

My first Love It and List It Linky! I've been following this linky from Jenna at Speech Room News for months, because it's always such a great way to find ideas, and now that I've started this blog I can finally join in!

This month's topic is Language Apps. I use my iPad a lot in therapy, because it's just so engaging for clients, easy to cart around with me, and there are a lot of wonderful apps that I can use to target just about any goal. Here are some of my favourite and most heavily used language apps:

What Doesn't Belong - A Spot the Diffence Finding Game

What Doesn't Belong is a really nice app where some silly people are using the wrong objects. The player has to identify what is wrong with the picture. I've used it a lot for early reasoning skills, to talk about things like object function, why questions and even some describing. And, it's free!

Mr Potato Head

Kids seem to absolutely love this Mr Potato Head game. I've used it for goals like following directions, describing, learning body parts and more. It's $2.99 and comes with a heap of different costumes for Mr and Mrs Potato head.

See Touch Learn

See Touch Learn is a really nice app for working on vocabulary, following simple directions and understanding modifications, adjectives and concepts. The visuals are simple, clear and use photos. The app itself is free and comes with a few lessons downloaded, but also has access to a library of lessons on a huge range of concepts and categories (each lesson in the library is around $1.99).

Toontastic Jr. Pirates Puppet Theater

Toontastic Jr. Pirates Puppet Theater is favourite story making app, where the child gets to choose a beginning, middle and end of their story, move the characters around and record their story audio. I use this app for working on spontaneous productions of syntax, morphology and even vocabulary goals. The best part is that the client gets to listen to their recording and hear any errors/achievements. You can get the app free, with one scene for each for the beginning, middle and end of the story, and I think it's around $5 to unlock all 12 scenes.

There you have it, my favourites for language apps. I'm always looking for new apps to use in therapy, so I'm really looking forward to having a peek at everyone else's apps of choice!

Speech Sound Syllables for Speech Therapy

My last post had links to a few speech sound syllable sheet freebies in my Teachers Pay Teachers store. They've been downloaded WAY more than I thought they would, and I've even seen them pinned a whole heap to Pinterest. It's so exciting to think that people are finding some use in my creations! Now, I've finally completed the whole set of consonant syllable sheets, and they're available in my TpT store for $3. Click on the pictures to check them out.

There are a total of 23 syllable sheets, with a complete set of English consonants, including:

• Plosives - p, b, t, d, k, g
• Fricatives - s, z, f, v, sh, th (voiceless), th (voiced)
• Affricates - ch, j
• Nasals - m, n, ng
• Liquids and Glides - w, y, r, l
• Glottals - h

 They can be used to target CV, VC, VCV, CVC, and more combinations in speech therapy.

                

If you download them, or the free sound syllables sheets, let me know what you think and how you use them in therapy!

Freebies: Speech Sound Syllable Sheets

Here are a few more freebies ready to download on Teachers Pay Teachers.

Decent and simple speech sound syllable sheets for speech therapy have been hard to come by, so I've been slowing making my own set.

At the moment I have three available for free in my TpT store, the 's', 'ch' and 'j' syllable sheets. Click on each of the pictures to take you to TpT to downloaded them.

               

Don't forget to stay posted, because I'm working on a complete set of these syllable sheets that will be up for download very soon.

Freebie: Clinic On Wheels | A Checklist for Mobile Speech Pathologists

Mobile therapy presents some pretty unique challenges, the most significant of which is making sure you're able to transport enough with you to make sure your sessions are successful. Don't get me wrong, it's a great way to conduct therapy, and I've seen some amazing benefits by conducting intervention in a setting with which a child is familiar, but it's a whole different ballgame to having a clinics worth of resources just out the door for when something unexpected pops up. 

In my time working as a Speechie on wheels, I've come up with a pretty efficient, yet comprehensive set of items, both practical and therapy based, to help me get by. Some are common sense, some have come with experience, but they will all come in handy whether you're completely mobile, or do the occasional home/school/preschool visit. I've finally gotten around to writing them down, and decided to share them through Teachers Pay Teachers, for free! Click on the pictures to follow the link and download.

This checklist will have you pretty well prepared for everything you will reasonably need. There will, of course, be sessions where you will wish you had brought something you didn't have, or a client's behaviour will be so difficult that a closet full of toys to bribe them with would have helped. It's important to remember, though, that these sessions are few and far between, and all you can do is be as prepared as you can.

I hope you find this checklist useful in creating your "Clinic On Wheels". Don't forget to take a moment to rate the checklist on Teachers Pay Teachers.